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LAKE PLACID, N.Y. (AP) — Reigning USA Luge national champion and 2014 Sochi Olympic team member Aidan Kelly will skip this year's international sliding season while recovering from a herniated disk.

Kelly is planning to train in the U.S. this winter, after he recovers.

Kelly was 20th in last season's World Cup standings, highlighted by an eighth-place showing on his home track at New York's Mount Van Hoevenberg.

USA Luge's national championships are Friday and Saturday in Lake Placid. Veteran U.S. men's luge athlete Chris Mazdzer also will not be present for the championships, since he'll be in Pyeongchang, South Korea, as part of a group selected to test the track that will host the 2018 Olympics.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Relatives of Jesse Owens and America's 17 other black athletes from the 1936 Olympics were welcomed to the White House on Thursday by President Barack Obama for the acknowledgement they didn't receive along with their white counterparts 80 years ago.

Along with the relatives of the 1936 African-American Olympians, gloved-fist protesters Tommie Smith and John Carlos and members of the 2016 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams met the president and first lady Michelle Obama. Obama congratulated the Rio athletes, thanked Smith and Carlos for waking up Americans in 1968 and praised 1936 Olympians who made a statement in front of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

TOKYO (AP) — An expert panel set up by Tokyo's newly elected governor says the price tag of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics could exceed $30 billion unless drastic cost-cutting measures are taken. That's more than a four-fold increase from the initial estimate at the time Tokyo was awarded the games in 2013.